The Late Show interview that wasn’t has turned into a bonanza for James Talarico, the Democrat and U.S. Senate hopeful.
Talarico, a Texas state representative running in the Democratic primary for what is now Sen. John Cornyn’s seat, says that his campaign raised more than $2.5 million in the 24 hours after the appearance, which has now garnered tens of millions of views across social platforms and YouTube after being denied on the actual CBS broadcast.
In fact, Talarico has turned the incident into a rallying cry for his entire campaign, as he articulated on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MS Now show Tuesday night.
“It should be troubling to all of us, regardless of our political affiliations or our political beliefs, that the most powerful people in the country, the most powerful politicians and the most powerful corporate executives, are working together to sell out the First Amendment, to sell out our freedom of speech, in order to protect their own power and their own wealth,” Talarico said. “And that should be concerning to all of us, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, whether you’re a progressive or conservative, because an attack on any one of our First Amendment rights is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights.”
To back up for a moment: On Monday, Late Show host Stephen Colbert told his audience that the network said that he couldn’t interview Talarico on the show, citing the FCC’s new guidance on equal time rules for political candidates.
“[Talarico] was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert told the audience. “Then I was told in some uncertain terms that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on.”
He went on to direct viewers to the Late Show’s YouTube page, where the interview was uploaded, and as of writing has about 5.5 million views. Of course, the interview and clips from it were also uploaded to X, Instagram Reels, TikTok and other platforms, which have combined to add tens of millions more views to that total.
CBS responded Tuesday with a statement explaining its reasoning round the equal time rule, which in turn sparked pushback from Colbert, who said that he “really don’t want an adversarial relationship with the network.”
“So we obeyed our network and put the interview on YouTube where it’s gotten millions of views. And I can see why,” Colbert said Tuesday. “I wish we could have put it on the show where no one would have watched it … but here’s what I do want to tell the lawyers how to do their jobs. They know damn well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS’s lawyers, who for the record approve every script that goes on the air — whether it’s about equal time or this image of frogs having sex. That’s a true story.”
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